Factorio Forums

is it possible to create a furnace with a heater (a boiler and furnace in 1 machine)

i hope its possible, as it will help with making alloys (for a specific alloy, you need a specific heat level)

I don't think something like this is already posible as you would require entity with next properties:
- temperature property
- ability to reaise this temperature property by burning some fuel (available in water dynamics as you are rasing temperature of the water itself)
- ability to set desired temperature the entity tries to preserve (avaliable in boiler entity to congtrol the meperature of the water that is passing through the bouler)
- ability for temperature to graduraly lower when there is no fuel burning (I don't belive such functionality is present in game yet anywhere). The rate at which the temperature would graduraly lower should be dependant on the current temperature (higher the temperature faster it cools down). Without this setting desired temperature has no effect on fuel comsumtption and therefore no efect on gameplay whatsoever.

Adding such entity into game could be quite usefull in adding lots of more depth to the game:
- as Dysoch already implied needing to heat up the furnace to certain temperature could provide the necessity to build special furnaces to be able to produce certain materials. Also change in furnace temperature could also have effect on the production rate of the furnace.
- adding ability for water to slowly cool down in pipes could add some more realism to steam engine concept.